


Question

by spuffyduds



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 1000-3000 words, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-16
Updated: 2010-01-16
Packaged: 2017-10-06 08:39:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/51754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spuffyduds/pseuds/spuffyduds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>A little back-story for the body possessed by the Yellow-Eyed Demon in Season Two, and set just after the finale of that season.  Quite possibly Jossed into nonsensicality by later seasons.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Question

**Author's Note:**

> A little back-story for the body possessed by the Yellow-Eyed Demon in Season Two, and set just after the finale of that season. Quite possibly Jossed into nonsensicality by later seasons.

For their fifteenth anniversary they go for a weekend at Myrtle Beach, because that's where they first met, at one of those goofy-golf courses along the cheesy boardwalk--the kind where you have to putt your ball into the navel of a big peeling plaster Buddha.

They have a good time, eating funnel cakes and playing skee-ball, and she wins him a giant green stuffed kangaroo at one of the target-shooting booths and he says, "Oh, Ella, you're soooooo amazing, I will be your girl _forever_," and she swats him.

By evening she's a little sunburned, and sluggish and sleepy from it; so they go back to the motel. He tucks her in, kisses her pink nose very carefully, and runs out to get them some fish plates.

"Don't forget the tartar sauce," she says. And then she falls asleep. And that's the last time she ever sees him.

************************************************************************************

She stays there for weeks, going to the police station every day. Sometimes she's polite and reasonable and sometimes she screams at them and sometimes she cries, but it doesn't change anything—-he's simply gone. No clues, no trail, nothing.

They find where he bought the fish plates; he apparently picked them up, then came back a few minutes later for tartar sauce and left again. And after that—-nothing. (Well, the police lieutenant says, a couple of high-schoolers claim they saw someone who matched his description but had "glowing yellow eyes," and adds, "Those new rave drugs...it's just sad, really.")

Finally the lieutenant tells her that he's sorry, but at this point they're probably not _going_ to find anything. "If no evidence has turned up yet—-it was probably somebody just blowing through town, not a local, some serial offender who grabbed him—-just a case of wrong place, wrong time," and she looks up at his sympathetic face and gets that what he's actually thinking is "Face up to it, lady, he _left_ you." And he would _never_, she knows that, but---there's nothing more she can do.

*******************************************************************************************

Eventually he's declared legally dead. Eventually she marries again. And she does love her new husband, she does, but she still spends some time—-less, yes, as the years go on—-sending descriptions and photocopied pictures to police stations around the country.

And in the middle of the night, almost nine years after his disappearance, the phone rings. She fumbles the phone to her ear and says, "Hello?" her voice slurred and murky with sleep, and—-it's him. It sounds exactly like him, and it says, "Ella, my God, I'm sorry, I can't—-it won't let me _go_ and the things it makes me _do_, my _God_\--" and then there's a click and a dial tone.

She screams, and David scrambles awake next to her, grabs her and asks what's wrong, and she sobs it out to him and he holds her and whispers, "Just a prank, honey. Somebody pulling a horrible prank," but she's not sure, she never is sure about that.

*****************************************************************************************

Another decade, more, goes by without a word. She and David have retired; they're comfortable and happy and they garden together, and sometimes when he's out for poker night, she reads through comments on the web site she's set up, with pictures, details of the disappearance. She links to every official missing-persons site that will let her, reads through them too when she has time.

Most of the comments on her site are from psychics who've seen him camping with Bigfoot. But every now and then there's a lead that she digs into a little; David never seems to mind, but they don't pan out.

And then one day she gets an e-mail from a morgue attendant in Wyoming. He sounds not-crazy—-aside maybe from his hobby of surfing missing-persons sites—-and he claims to have a body that might fit the description; recently killed, which can't be right, surely, but—-he mentions the little anchor tattoo on his calf that she described on the site, _and_ the funny swirly back-of-the-head cowlick that she didn't.

She dithers, but "Of course you have to go," David says, and she goes.

***********************************************************************************

The morgue attendant arranges to meet her after hours. "The cops are being kinda freaky about this one, for some reason," and when he lets her in he looks her up and down, seems confused. "I thought you'd be—-ah, younger," he says.

"What? Why?"

"Well, hey, that's sexist thinking, right? I mean, no reason that age gap can't swing both ways. Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones—-it's only fair, yeah? I'm Devon, by the way."

"Ella," she says, and she has no idea what he's talking about. But she finds, as they walk over to the metal wall of drawers, that she's not quite ready to look in one yet, wants to make a little conversation.

"If—-if this is him," she says. "I'm impressed you could tell from the picture, since he's more than twenty years older now."

"He—-what? Your husband disappeared that long ago? Shit, lady, I'm sorry, I totally missed the dates when I was skimming your site, I just got excited because the picture was so exactly—-fuck. Dragging you all the way out here for nothing, I'm sorry, there's no way, this guy is definitely the age the guy looked in that picture—"

And she's starting to sag with disappointment and relief, but then Devon pulls open a drawer and flips back a sheet, says, "See?"

And it's him.

She can hardly even spare any horror at the bullet hole in the middle of his forehead, because she's so horrified that it's him—-exactly him, the thick wavy hair and the dimple and the little crow's feet from smiling, he smiled so much, but the worst thing is that it's him just as he was the last time she saw him, not a day older. Not a gray hair, not a new wrinkle—-she's standing here twenty years sadder and tireder, and he's exactly who he was when he walked out of their motel room and into--what? A time warp? "Wrong place, wrong time," she whispers to herself. And it's so unfair that she's finally gotten her answer and the answer is still a question, the answer is still, "What the hell happened?"

She makes a little sound, and Devon says, "Lady, what--_is_ this him? Is this your husband?"

She pats Devon on the hand, tries to thank him, tries to explain the unexplainable, but all she can manage to say is, softly, "I wish he hadn't gone back for the tartar sauce."

 

\--END--


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